Fighting for better while facing the worst | This Week In Business
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This Week in Business is our weekly recap column, a collection of stats and quotes from recent stories presented with a dash of opinion (sometimes more than a dash) and intended to shed light on various trends. Check every Friday for a new entry.
Even reporting from the other side of the Atlantic, it's easy to tell that the vibe at this year's Game Developers Conference has been different.
The past two years, marking the event's post-pandemic return, have been a return to form with hundreds of companies flocking to San Francisco to tout the Next Big Thing for video games (which, as always, have no guarantee of becoming A Thing, let alone a Big one that occurs Next). And with the amount of AI news that has emerged this past week, that holds true for GDC 2024 as well.
But there's something else: a resistance among developers, a determination to speak up, a refusal to accept many of the hardships those who make games currently face.
This was perhaps best typified by the GDScream, a public demonstration in the Yerba Buena Gardens next to the Moscone Center that houses the conference. Organised by Fortnite festival designer Scott Jon Siegel and former Epic Games producer Caryl Shaw, this aimed to create a moment of catharsis for developers frustrated by the ongoing mass layoffs across the industry, as well as the recent hate and harassment campaign that began by targeting Sweet Baby Inc and other concerns that have made the games industry an increasingly miserable place for a number of people.
The idea of GDScream, which was held on Wednesday, March 20, was simple: gather together and scream.
QUOTE | "A moment of feeling good, a moment of comradery, and moment of just fully acknowledging how messed up everything us and acknowledging that we're all here at this event pretending everything is fine...it can't be a constant topic of conversation, but it feels like there needs to be just one moment of
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